Thursday, May 01, 2014

Wood thrush-yes! Bloodroot--not

Tree Swallow taken at Braddock Bay Hawkwatch

The first wood thrush have arrived by my cabin, and the first ovenbirds. I head the sweet songs on Monday evening, the day before a long stretch of rain inundated the mountain. The rain stopped late last evening, but I still feel I’m living in a bog. The ground squishes underfoot and puddles are everywhere. And since I’m living on the side of a mountain, you can guess how bad it is in a valley or on flat land. Those areas are flooded; houses are sometimes on little islands, like castles with a moat.

But this afternoon the fog has lifted and for the first time in days the sun is out and the day is warm. The streams will recede and the island houses will revert to houses with lawns in another day or two. I hope the break in bad weather continues for a while. Outside chores are piling up around my cabin, and my list of them gets longer every day—move the chicken pen, clean up extraneous junk that somehow has appeared, clean the gutters, trim back the fast-growing underbrush. I need more than a few sunny weekend days to even make a dent in the list.

I am also starting to think that for the first time in years I won’t have bloodroot at the cabin. The little flowers haven't appeared yet, and at this point in the season I suspect they won't at all. I watch the patch where they grow anxiously but see no sign of them. The area hasn’t been disturbed at all, so I have no obvious explanation for why they haven’t appeared. Now that I have wild violet in the woods, I’m thinking I won’t have the bloodroot at all this year. At least, I hope it’s only this year that they don’t appear. I’ve gotten used to these one-day wonders, and I hate to think it may well be another full year before I can see them again at the cabin.

3 comments:

I've noticed good years and bad for a lot of flowering plants and trees. Some years all of the front porch geraniums in the city are flourishing, only to languish the next while the begonias have a good year. And so on. Maybe that's the case with your bloodroot

Though if a little blue bird like the one in your photo stopped and let me take its picture, I could live with just about any other disappointment, nature-wise.

About Me

I live in a cabin in the forests of Pennsylvania. I write about what I see and do in the natural world around me. I've been a hawkwatcher for more than 20 years, a birder for longer than that, and a crayfish-catcher since I was a polywog.